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The Murder Mystery

A murder mystery would be so easy to write.  I don’t know, I may have watched or read or listened to a few thousand of them.  

The other night I just finished watching Rosemary & Time, a mystery about two gardeners going about the English countryside and solving murders.  It’s easy to see why that show only lasted three seasons.  Two women drive around the countryside or to other countries and wherever they go, someone gets murdered.

Just like Father Brown has had eight seasons and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.  In a small town, there might be a murder once every 10 to 20 years.  Kembleford has 7 to 12 murders a season.  Tonight I watched the 1974 Father Brown and that is more like a play adapted from a G.K. Chesterton short story.

Here are the parts to a murder mystery.  The first scene is usually about the victim, or the murder takes place.  In a Wallander novel, it would be a 5 to 10 page bio of the victim, which has nothing to do with the murder and then the murder.

Next scene is the detective or private investigator, priest, gardener, ect ect enters the scene.  Or we get to see a part of their life before they are called to action.

Then the body is found.  The hero is called to action.  Questions are asked.  Clues are followed up on.  Most of the time they point in one direction.  The police, the detective, or the chief of police believes they’ve nailed the culprit.  The hero thinks otherwise and usually keeps his or her mouth shut.  In the earlier episodes of the whole series, the hero fires off their mouth and get into trouble.

The hero goes off on their own line of enquiry.  While they talk it over with their friend or colleague, there is a why did such and such thing happen when there was already such and such thing question.  This sends our faithful hero or heros to search for something else which will answer the question they had.

Then the hero is confident they know who did it and the arrest is made, or the chase happens.  Followed by the sleuth explaining who did it and why the murder took place.


I don’t know when I will get to write a murder mystery.  It may be one of those projects that I will write if I don’t feel like writing the current project.  Or it might be a between project thing.

One of my detectives, Erika Lund, is on hold for a while.  Along with my thief John Clay.  Up on plate for a in between projects is Inspector Archibald Trevor.  An inspector at Cambridge who has been assigned to investigate a murder in Sandy, which is in Bedfordshire instead of Cambridgeshire.  Because the police department in the smaller shire of Beford are lower on resources than Cambridgeshire.

At any rate, writing a mystery would be fun.

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